Something that kind of bothers me about the way these forums work, and I wonder if there's any way to change it?

That is: Say I pop into a particular forum's thread index page...Stan's Lounge, for example. When I scan the topics I see that there are a couple new threads I hadn't seen before, with perhaps 10 new posts each.

If I leave the site without clicking through and reading those threads, next time I come back and the visual count then seems to indicate that I HAVE read them. The threads get "marked as visited" just by visiting the thread index.

That seems to be kind of unusual behavior, something I don't see too many other places that I can recall.

Yeah, I get this and have seen it myself.

I don't think there's anything we can do about that. It's built into UBB.

Thanks!

Neil

i think it's a bug…

Actually, I don't think so. I think it's the way it's designed.

I don't think so

Its Forum List / index -vs- thread list , they act the same .

You visit a forum its marked as you read it - you visit a thread its marked as you read it

SImply
I see what Sparkey is saying but if you open a Forum it will be marked as read after all you read its , contents in that forum - Now if you go back to the same forum the non read threads that you did not read will still be marked in red count numbers .

Makes sense to me

What he's talking about, go to a forum that has unread posts, quit Safari, then relaunch it and come back to the forum that had unread posts, they all show as read.

Yep. I get it.

That's the way it works. For me, I actually like that -- as "read" means ... you've seen what's new.

In any event, nothing I can do about it.

Thanks!

Neil

Yes, in this case i have to agree that this is not a bug.

If it didn't behave that way, the list of unread posts would carry on indefinitely (unless the user cleared it with the "Mark all-read" button —that, i believe, should really be "Mark all-Viewed"; see below—) creating memory issues to the client and maybe to the server.



In relation to the behavior Phosphor points at, —that i initially called "a bug" in my previous post above— i also have to agree now that that wasn't a bug either.

In this case, when you open a thread with, say 20 'unviewed replies' in red and decide to read 1, then go back to the parent Forum through the "Index" button or otherwise, you find that the red marks from that thread have disappeared. It doesn't say 19 replies unread in red quotes. The fact that now it's clear means that there are no new posts since you last looked inside the thread. For me too "read"="viewed", as you say: ( If the user wants to see the unread posts marked unread she/he has to open the thread again and that information is there. )


All new posts in that thread will appear in red in the index. Our hypothetical thread would read 25(5) if there were 5 new posts.


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What i can't figure out is when(?) the posts in the index become blue and when(?) they revert to black!

Anybody got that behavior pattern solved?

Not really a bug, but certainly a flaw. Never liked the way it does this either. MacCentral used to do it, as did MacMinute and several other forums I visit. Annoying, but not deal-breaking.

Then again, for some users ... it works exactly they way they want it.

I understand the comment ... as I can see the benefits of both ways. Not much I can do about it regardless.

Thanks!

Neil